Space, Country & Western? Barre Phillips' Three Day Moon & What is Jazz anyway?

Moon is in the Gutter

I'm very happy that I scored Barre Phillips' Three Day Moon on Cd, a startlingly strange esoteric psychedelic jazz album which came out on the ECM label in 1979. I used to have the album on vinyl and it was one of those unique records to me. It's pretty difficult to find on Cd--I'm not certain why ECM has not reissued this one. Three Day Moon is a fairly amazing melding of different styles. You have the Mingusy Barre Phillips, the psychedelic textures of Terje Rypdal, the tabla rhythms of Trilok Gurtu and eerie syntesizer of Dieter Feichtner. There is some unique quality to this music that actually seems to put me in a hypnotic trance. It wasn't something I was trying to have happen, but I no on a few occasions that I was startled into consciousness by the sound of a needle scraping at the end of one side of the album. But my eyes were open! Listening to this album never feels to give my brain a good cleaning, but not in a soporific way. I feel relaxed, but more energized and focused.

I first discovered ECM records in a strange place, my local Caldor department store, now defunct, but a place where I used to find interesting cut-outs, like Teardrop Explodes or Killing Joke Cd's. I started seeing these albums with unusual artwork on the cover being sold there. Because I recognized some of the names on the albums like Keith Jarrett, I knew that it was jazz. There was a certain consistency in style on the records unlike other labels that I was familiar with. They were so cheap too. I could kick myself now. At one point the store had a huge bin of ECM vinyl that they were selling for 99 cents each!! In retrospect, I should have bought a pile of them.

Three Day Moon came into my possession years later because of a visit to a record store, upon the recommendation of  the proprietor. That's one of the nice things about going into a real record store--those wonderful surprises you can encounter, courtesy of people who are genuinely informed about music.  He played the record for me and I was won over pretty quickly.



Though the songs are definitely not all the same, there is a mesmerizing quality that runs throughout the album. Though credit must be given to the innovative and virtuoistic guitar playing of Rypdal, the star and gang leader here is Phillips. Sometimes his bass lines lead the charge, other the times they buzz in the background forming a type of private conversation. Sometimes the bass is a crazy rangeing heartbeat. Overall the soundscapes are startling. Ostensibly, this is considered a jazz album. I don't think this is such an important distinction to be made--I just like this album a lot. But I think back to the reaction of the Jazz World when Ornette Coleman burst onto the scene. (Phillips actually performed with Coleman on the beautiful Naked Lunch soundtrack).

The reaction was not positive. The strangeness of the new style was jarring. Today when people are attempting to institutionalize jazz as an America's home grown of Classical music, it creates a difficult dichotomy. I guess it is like loose and strict constructivists of the American Constitution. Like, the Constitution does not mention cell phones, so how can government regulate them? I guess in terms of jazz, I am a loose constructivist. Give credit where credit is due, to all the great jazz legends and tradition, but let the genre breathe. Don't be such a tight ass as to what Jazz is and isn't.

Back at the old Knitting Factory in NYC they used to have a What is Jazz? festival, which they held at the same time as the old institution, The New York Jazz Festival. And no doubt not accidentally. Well, What is Jazz? quickly grew and grew, as it was a melting pot of diversity, and a cross pollination of musical genres. Eventually it threatened to usurp the other festival in stature. First and foremost, jazz is improvisatory music, and is a cross pollination of musical styles, and in some ways is musically political satire. People who create great jazz imbue it with part of themselves, sometimes in way that can't quite be replicated. And if you try to pin it down, you kill the life out of it, like a beautiful butterfly collection.

It's a Heartbeat, It's a Love Beat

I'm listening to Three Day Moon as I tap the keyboard and I'm enjoying it as much as I did when I first heard this unique disc. S.C. & W is without doubt the best country space raga I've ever heard. All 9 1/2 minutes of it. There is a zen quality here where even disparate noise that might be accidental seems like it is there for a reason. There is a strange ambience at work, perhaps because of the 1000 mile journey that Phillips, Gurtu and Feichtner took from Salzburg to Oslo to make this album. In a converted ice cream wagon!! For some reason these disparate artists came together and created a coherent masterpiece, even though at times it seems they are all playing different things in a schizophrenic way.



Three Day Moon is a very amazing one of a kind record, the kind of record that has inspired me to seek out interesting music outside my comfort zone.
I can't say that this philosophy has given me much regret.